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7/30/2016 0 Comments My Blog for July 30, 2016'90s Hit Songs Appropriated in Humanities Theses
Black Hole Sun: The Levinasian Kinship Ethics of Post-Millennial Queer Couples and Throuples Baby One More Time: The Rise and Fall of the Duggar Family as Interrogation of Postmodern Christian Hypocrisy U Can’t Touch This: The Perverse Return of Puritanism in a Digital Age Saturated with Oversexualization (Pretty Fly) for a White Guy: The Male Superhero Body in Crisis Under the Bridge: The Radical Psychogeography of Underground Hobo Networks Semi-Charmed Life: Parapsychology and Superstition in The Legend of Zelda Games Genie in a Bottle: The Subversive Potential of Reading Supporting Characters in Disney’s Aladdin Against Islamophobic Discourse Gonna Make You Sweat: Gay Gym Cruising as a Promiscuous Alternative to Assimilationist Shaming Mama Said Knock You Out: Discursive Violent Acts of Parents of Adults Living at Home Groove Is in the Heart: The Music of Daft Punk and the Trangressiveness of Adult Play at Music and Ideas Festivals Virtual Insanity: The Link Between Online Motivational Mantras and Psychotic Breakdowns Freak on a Leash: The Impact of the Popularity of 50 Shades of Grey on North American Bondage Communities Insane in the Brain: Transphobic Discourse and the Problematic of the Pathologizing of Ableism You Get What You Give: Millennial Entitlement’s Undermining of the Sharing Economy: A Bataillean Rereading Barely Breathing: The Inexchangable Gift of Physician Assisted Suicide: A Bataillean Rereading This Is How We Do It: The Emergence of Authoritarian Atavism in North American Equestrian Communities Rico Suave: Ecuadorian Homosocial Kinship in the Music and Dance of the Latin American Diaspora 7/22/2016 0 Comments My Blog for July 22, 2016My body is spent. For too many days, I’ve been wracked with tears, with shivers, trapped in an overwhelming vortex of angst and abandonment. I haven't been able to explain it to my partner, to my children, or even to myself. I used to be the kind of person who saw teenagers or even younger Millennials out in public and thought to myself, They’re young and innocent. They don’t know what real sadness feels like yet. But I do.
Well, I was wrong. Until recently, I hadn’t experienced the profound and collective spirit-shattering of true loss, the sheer carapace where one emotional step in the wrong direction might send me careening to a place I might never escape. So it’s with this sense of stake, for myself and my selfhood, that I feel the need to reach out online and mourn with my friends and readers, to express myself in the only way I am truly confident about, on social media. I’m going to talk about the Noodles and Company that burned down. It felt like it would be there forever, in that little mall near Lake Calhoun tucked in the corner next to Caribou. For various members of my community and at various times, it was a sibling, a parent, a stepparent, a caregiver, a pillar. You always knew you’d see a familiar face, drown a bad day in a sea or tangy marinara or outrageously zippy Greek yogurt sauce, say yes to the big decadent brick of Rice Krispie bar even if you were counting carbs. We saw our children and our neighbor’s children grow up, graduate from the kids’ menu to the adult cavatappi, macaroni, or Indonesian peanut saute. First dates over creamy tomato basil bisque and tall glasses of water blossomed into love, and many evenings, you could trace a family tree’s rococo roots and branches from generation to generation along a large communal table, all tucking in to a meal that fed their bellies but also nourished their soul. The Noodles and Company was Minneapolis. Without it, we’re not the same and we’re never going to be the same. That day when a grease fire spiraled out of control was our own Buddy Holly, our JFK assassination, our Kent State rolled into one. And it wasn’t the kind of roll you slather butter on or use to sop up the last droplets of a creamy stroganoff sauce. They say food is the only thing that touches all the senses at once, and the truth and impact of that really hit me this summer. As I sat with my daughter showing her the selfies we’d taken over the years in front of chicken Caesars, Pad Thais, and those simple but seductive buttered noodles, she didn’t understand why I couldn’t stop crying. She cried with me, though, and that only made me cry even harder. Finally, here we are, faced with the need to mourn but also to heal, to share joyful memories and realize we will cope, because we have to cope, with this cruel world. This will change the way we mourn forever, leave a penne-shaped hole in our hearts and minds, and give rise to oh so many questions. Do we try to cope with other Noodles locations? Do we scour Google for attempts to recreate those dishes at home, even though we’ll never enjoy them in the same ambience? How do we build stronger interpersonal and familiar bonds? In times of crisis, many find strength. We heal in number, in increments, together and separately. We drive past Calhoun Commons knowing that even though Whole Foods and Chipotle are still there, something’s missing. Something we took for granted, something that changed us all, and now that it’s gone, something we’ll never be able to understand. And somehow, at the end of it all, that enigma is the one place I think I might find the little gleam of sunlight that will turn this cultural, communal disaster into something bigger, better, more beautiful—and maybe someday, far in the future, we’ll all be a little bit more delicious again. 7/21/2016 0 Comments My Blog for July 21, 2016Rhetorical Violence “A”
Agnomination: I don’t give a tuppence about Trump/Pence! Anacoenesis: Are you troubled by the convention’s similarities to particularly rowdy episodes of Jerry Springer? Anaphora: As you incite people to violence, as you demonstrate your pathetically small vocabulary, as your makeup reminds me of the girls in my high school who smoked Newports by the railroad tracks . . . Anastrophe: This up is shit fucked! Antanaclasis: When I look at you—I think about how your face is fried, and how I wish you were fired, and your obsequious friends, and the Red Lobster fare you’re probably fond of—when I look at you, I want to hurl. Antanagoge: Your platform is bullshit, but you make up for that with your silky toupee. Antimeria: Your blowharding sucks! Antonomasia: The Donalds of the world should take their fascism and get the fuck out of the public sphere. Apophrasis: Were I not convinced of your long history of honor and integrity, I might think this whole shitshow is your own fucking fault! Aposiopesis: If you win the election, I’ll-- Asyndeton: Government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. Attempteration: You’re a fucking disaster, leaving one with the impression that things might have been better in an alternate system of karma. It’s Too Dang Hot!!!!!!!!! (with apologies to Dante) I. 1.someone thats EXTREMEMLY good looking but not like cute, more like sexy. when they walk by u turn ure head and wish u had a pause button or something. 2.something that is in some way attractive 1.omg that guy on the skate board wa so hot! 2.as paris hilton says "thats hot” II. If was so hot today, you could fry an egg, and I did! III. someone who makes your cock/pussy hot. She is so damn hot, and my cock becomes hot as hell! IV. Me mind on fire, me soul on fire feeling hot hot hot Party people all around me feeling hot hot hot What to do on a night like this music sweet I can't resist We need a party song, a fun and little jam V. 1.Girl: A Female who is really pretty/gorgeous; Has A Nice Body. U'd Tap Thier Ass Any Second Male: A Male Who is really attractive, carries himself well, and Has a nice Body. U'd Tap Thier Ass Any Second 2.The Opposite Of Cold. 1. Damn.. That Girl Is Hot! Example: Jessica Alba, Anna Sundstrand, Ashley Olsen. 2.Omg That Guy Is Fine! Examples: Jesse Mccartney, Chris Trousdale, Ryan Sheckler.. VI. How long did you put this in for, Lynn? It’s hotter than the sun! VII. Being hot is more than attractiveness, its about smouldering sexy appeal, its about the attitude...unattainable and knowing it. Jessica Alba is Hot! Johnny Depp is HOOOOT!! VIII. My friend’s family took me to the Michael Mann movie Heat and I was the only one who didn’t like it. I thought it was self-indulgent and boring. IX. someone that you can't resist kissing or having sexwith. someone that makes you stare and drool and wish you guys are on the bed doing it. that dude was soo hot that i want to fuck him up:) or man...that girl is so hot, im gonna hump her rightnnow! or im going to stick my dick in that hot girl's pussy. or that hot guy is going to let me suck his cock now! Discovered Passion: A Serial Story in Sentences (Part Two) As the DJ put on the song about two lovers falling into each other’s arms just as a beautiful shining star fell from the sky, he watched the audience, wondering why so few people had gotten up to dance and whether it might be more sensible to change to a song they would recognize, although he was sick of crowds that weren’t satisfied until he played “Low Places” so they could sing and dance to that country hit so many of them felt a connection to as it has been on the radio in their houses and cars and perhaps they connected it to high school dances and loving caresses with their special someones. 7/20/2016 0 Comments My Blog for July 20, 2016St. Louis Park High School Class of 1996 20th Reunion: Terri’s Timeline (Part One)
10:30 a.m. Terri wakes up, takes an autoerotic bubble bath while listening to the cassette maxi single for “Dressed for Success” by Roxette, and puts on her purple velour road trip jumpsuit. I'm not afraid, a trembling flower 11:15 a.m. Terri loads her suitcase, her cooler, and her deluxe Caboodle full of cosmetics into her arctic white Kia Sephia and hits the road. She will be driving to St. Louis Park from her home in Ankeny, Iowa, just outside Des Moines. Another town where I get close to the bone 12:45 p.m. Terri finishes her 22-ounce thermos of cranberry lime hard lemonade and stops at a Kum & Go to buy Newports, chablis, and pork rinds. Hit the road out of nowhere, I had to jump my car 1:30 p.m. Terri pulls into a rest stop to see if she’s finally got a visit from the new rare cat on that damn app she can’t stop playing. The cat is not there, but she goes to the bathroom and refills her thermos. I love the way you sway your hips next to mine 2:00 p.m. Some asshole on the radio is complaining about neighbors who don’t clean up dog poop in their yard. Terri screams, “What a fucking loser!” and changes the channel to WLOL, which is playing some crap rap. Banging on the head drum 2:30 p.m. Terri parks her car at the La Quinta Inn & Suites in Brooklyn Park and thinks that the place looks like a shithole. The woman working there has a thick Spanish accent and a goddamn pierced nose. She’s a juvenile scam 3:00 p.m. Terri changes into the Lee jeans she bought at Knollwood County seat in 1995 that still fit her and an oversized magenta T-shirt she likes to wear off the shoulder. She does her hair with the assistance of a curling iron and lots of Aqua Net, and then moves on to her special event makeup routine. Look sharp! 4:45 p.m. Terri arrives at the Brooklyn Center Old Chicago where she’s meeting her two best friends from high school, Linda and Deanna, to pregame. They try to order the nasty peach Boone’s Farm, which was their favorite drink in high school, but Old Chicago doesn’t carry Boone’s, so they order Long Islands instead. Tasty like a raindrop 5:30 p.m. Linda admits she is hoping to hook up with Ryan Cutler after the reunion if he still looks anything like he did in high school. He had tight buns and silky blond hair. And in the dark things happen faster 5:45 p.m. Deanna almost falls off her stool when she bends down to get her purse and show some photos of her dogs. Terri can see the top of Deanna’s butt crack and feels a tingle throughout her erogenous zone. I'll feed your heart and blow the dust from your eyes 6:10 p.m. Linda says, “No offense but fuck those dogs! I want a piece of ass tonight!” Deanna looks slightly upset and starts drinking more quickly. Heavenly bound 6:45 p.m. Terri orders birthday cake shots to slam before they leave for the reunion. Deanna says, “Remember when you got so drunk, you broke that shelf?” Never was a quitter Discovered Passion: A Serial Story in Sentences (Part One) The woman who was unsure about the direction her life had taken looked down at the denim jewelry that decorated her arms and fingers and imagined what could happen before the end of the night, but she wasn’t aware of the man who had meant so much to her back in Louisiana who was glancing at her with a look of desire and, in his mind, already thought of her as the denim fantasy woman he associated with hazy memories of days they had experienced together in a past that felt like another world. Svetlana’s MTV Memories Yes hello, my name is Svetlana Slutskova. I am 27 years old Russian pretty lady originally from Zheleznodorosky, a city east of Moscow, but now I live in Minneapolis area and work at kiosk in Mall of America called It Is Customized! As young girl in Moscow, my brother Kirill and I absolutely loved American TV shows, movies, pop culture in general. But especially MTV. Many of MTV VJs were huge star in Russia, especially Pauly Shore. I do not know about in U.S.A., but in Russia 1980s, Paul Shore was considered sex icon. As a young girl, I would lie in bed and dream that he would come to my room and have sex with me many times. My brother did not Pauly Shore so much, but he had huge crush on Simon Rex. When he found out through homosexual friend in St. Petersburg that Simon Rex did masturbation video called Young and Hard 6, he become obsessed with locating the tape. Finally he went to black market gay shop in very bad neighborhood in Moscow and paid six hundred rubles for VHS. He was obsessed with video, and watched it again and again until the tape no longer could be played. Now I do not watch so much MTV, because it is trash like Super Sexy 16 and Teenage Pregnant Sluts with Bad Fathers, but if it comes back to days like when downtown Julie Brown and Escape Club were popular, I would definitely become huge fan once again. 7/19/2016 0 Comments My Blog for July 19, 2016!Scorchers Are Coming!
Minnesota may be the Land of 100,000 Lakes, but most of them have been polluted by chemicals, weeds, and—worst of all—Asian immigrants fishing for mutant carp that will probably lead to an outbreak of something worse than Ebola and Zika combined! For all those people who aren’t fortunate enough to have a clean lake or healthily chlorinated pool nearby, we’ve asked three teenagers from Fairfax Middle School (part of the Gibbon-Winthrop-Fairfax district southeast of the Metro Area) to come up with wacky schemes to keep you cool, fresh, and happy during the hundred-plus degrees of hell we’re supposed to have later this week. Destiny Roach, Grade 6: My grandpa owned a business that sold them wooden pools that go in your yard, not in the ground, but then the government told him he gotta sell the property his store was on so they could build a Air Force base there. He was not happy about it and now moved to Oregon and thinks he’s being tracked by some people from Washington who have control of spaceships and stuff like that. Oh god, someone just walked by with a bag from DQ! I hope my mom will buy me one of them Cheese Quake Blizzards after supper today. Brock Sharpe, Grade 8: Fuck this stupid question, get an air conditioner, and go listen to the goddamn Bloodhound Gang because they RULE!!!!! Haven Leigh Christensen, Grade 7: In my family, we have a saying, and that saying is that Jesus is the only way. We also have a saying that if you have a sassy mouth, you might wind up spending some quality time with Daddy’s belt. But anyway, how would Jesus keep cool in the summertime? Well, I’m not really sure!!!! But I guess he didn’t wear much aside from a cloth diaper and a crown of thorns, which was probably a lot cheaper than those wonderful cargo shorts you can get at the Fleet Farm down the road. And although Jesus had long hair, I asked my pastor if it’s godly for boys to cut their hair short like in that weird half-shaved way that a lot of people in sinful Minneapolis have it, and he said that in the time of Jesus, it was not considered homosexual and womanly for a man to have longer hair, but now we should stick to traditional American Christian haircuts and my barber also goes to my church, so I guess it’s okay to dress like Jesus but have different hair. I also like to drink a big glass of Kool Aid and put some ice cubes in the glass but also put some in the pool we got for my brother. It’s shaped like a turtle. Isn’t that cute? I Love the Interviews They Do on NPR HOST: I often hear people saying that these Millennials are getting their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but I don’t agree. I think they’re pretty politically savvy and already come to comedy with a sense of nuance. Do you feel that way about your audience? COMIC: Actually, I want my work to be able to speak to anyone, so as horrible as it might sound, I hope they’ll listen whether or not they really follow so-called intelligent news coverage. H: You know, that reminds me of some You Tube videos I was watching last weekend from old Richard Pryor performances. Do you consider him one of the influences for your comedy? C: It’s funny you say that, because I was also trying to study up on some of his stuff, and it’s amazing how many of my peers echo the same feelings that he tapped into twenty, thirty years ago. H: Exactly. Let’s hear a clip from one of his Broadway routines. This is from 1977. PRYOR IN CLIP: I have a Puerto Rican mother and a negro father, and I grew up in a high rise building filled with Jews in an Italian neighborhood! When I was a kid, people looked at me and said, “He’s all of ‘em!” C and H: (laugher) H: What’s amazing about that is he wasn’t even making a joke; he was just being honest and he sort of used that as a way to connect with audiences who might not consider themselves minorities, or hadn’t participated in the minority experience. C: I know! It’s crazy that he can get a response like that from just telling the truth. Just by saying his mom was Latina and his father was an African-America, and talking about his neighborhood—that’s not a joke! It’s just real, and that’s what was like a hook that really resonated with everyone. H: So you’ve written a book called How to Make White People Laugh. (laughing) How did you come up with that? C: Well, in a society where white people control practically everything around us, one of my mottos is to keep them laughing, to keep them oiled up in case you need a favor, to punch with a really soft glove. H: (laughing) Let’s read some of the things on this list you wrote, this list of seventy-four or however many things you put on the white people list. C: (laughing) Yes, it’s seventy-four. H: “Fart jokes, Simpsons references, cute shorthaired puppies . . .” (laughing too hard to continue) C: (laughing) H: The puppies one! How did you come up with that? C: Well—spoiler alert—I recently bought a puppy, and when I’m out walking her, people will just laugh at her. So I put it on the list. H: (laughing) That is so funny! C: (laughing) H: You also cover some difficult conversations with your Muslim parents in a fairly straightforward way. Talk about that. C: (laughing) Well . . . The Brightest Stars in the Food Galaxy My favorite television program, The Food Network Star show, is almost over, which is totes making me want to cry a single tear! They find these, like, amazeballs peeps who are so totally real and make the most yummiest chow you can imagine! And all the haterz who feel the need to talk shiz about Giada’s teeth—you’re just jelly! Suck it!!!! Anyway, they’re down to the final three, and my BFF—who’s a total Nancy Drew Redditor, like the FBI should be getting her digits asap—found leaked descriptions for all three of their shows!! Of course only one of those shows will actually happen, but I guess they want to be prepared or avoid leaks or whatever and ever amen, etc. So without further adieu, here they are!!!!! Damiano Carrara, Bella EATaly: Damiano’s having some of his closest paisanos over for a casual dinner party. For starters, they’ll enjoy his gooey rice balls with marinara de la casa. Then, it’s chicken parmesano rollatini with cavatapi Milano, a decadent saffron-scented main course. They’ll want a dolce finish, and what hits that spot more than boozy tiramisu with a molten marscapone dipping sauce! You’ll dream about Damiano coming to your casa and telling you “buon appetito,” but if he did, you wouldn’t be able to understand it anyway because of his incomprehensible goddamn accent!!!!!!! Tregaye Fraser: Sassy Tregaye’s Whimsical Poppin’ Feast on Fleek: Y’all know that Tragaye’s shoe game is always poppin’, but her poppin’ popcorn shrimp with a sassy, saucy Sriracha marinade will get this whimsical backyard BBQ off to a poppin’ start! Next, her chicken fleek-a masala with honey “chile” mustard glaze will have you saying “Yasssssss!” with more intensity and sass than the most stereotypically gay YouTube “celebrity” on the interwebs!!! The BBQ ends with a poppin’ twist on s’mores: the secret’s in the jazzed-up Grand Marnier marshmallow shots that hit the spot with these gooey morsels of decadence. Jernard Wells: Food of Love from the Chef of Love: From the chef so full of love that he’s managed to father almost ten children comes an overflow of love juices that will seduce that special lady or man in your life. Aphrodisiac oyster fritters will have you gagging for cock and/or vagina. Then, a main course of lobster comes with a thick injection of decadent butter you’ll want to lick off your lover’s nipples. The evening ends with three minutes of forgettable missionary sex and only one orgasm. |
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